Materials

Miniature Painting

Islamic miniature painting is generally understood to mean small paintings that are or once were part of a manuscript, used as a frontispiece or an illustration for a text. Drawings and individual paintings have, however, also been preserved. They were either sketches or were intended to be placed as independent works of art in an album.

The miniatures usually had a paper base, but cardboard and in rare cases cotton or silk cloth were also used. The brilliant colors are usually opaque.

The oldest preserved miniature paintings were made in around the year 1000, but not until around 1200 were they found in larger numbers. Islamic miniature painting is often categorized rather summarily into four regional schools: the Arab, the Persian, the Indian, and the Ottoman Turkish.

India, Deccan, Hyderabad (?); c. 1710
Leaf: 40 × 23.5 cm

This posthumous portrait of Sultan Ali Adil Shah II (1656-1672) was the frontispiece for a well-known copy of Gulshan-i Ishq (The Rose Garden of Love), a mathnavi poem written in Urdu by Ali Adil Shah’s court poet, Mian Nusrati, and dedicated to the sultan.

The Ruler is seen on his throne, and in front of him lies a replica of Imam Ali’s split-blade sword, Dhu’l-Faqar. This is a reference to his Shiite faith, an allegiance that bothered the orthodox Great Mughal Aurangzeb and one of the reasons why he conquered the Deccan in 1686, when Bijapur was ruled by Ali’s young son Sikander.

After Aurangzeb’s death in 1707, a new state was founded in Hyderabad in the Deccan, where this manuscript was probably made.